New guide helps identify youth at risk and more -- news roundup

• OJJDP launches DMC virtual resource center
  This online forum provides Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) coordinators, state advisory group members, and other juvenile justice professionals with tools to exchange ideas, share trainings and communicate about new practice standards.
• Treatment Center alters schedule in response to adolescent sleep data
  Because sleep can affect a teen's mood and emotional self-control, Rosecrance Health Network, the largest adolescent treatment center in Illinois, restructured their program to reduce patients’ sleep deficit. Outcomes are encouraging.
• Update: Illinois juvenile prisons 
  Conditions in Illinois juvenile prisons are improving, according to a report by the John Howard Association on Illinois, but problems of overcrowding, lack of education and inadequate staffing linger.

• New guide helps identify youth at risk for alcohol-related problems
  The National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has released Screening and Brief Intervention for Youth: A Practitioner’s Guide. This free tool can help healthcare professionals identify youth at risk for alcohol-related problems, counsel or advise them, and connect them to external sources of treatment. It contains a risk assessment survey and links to motivational interviewing resources.

• Baltimore’s proposed juvenile jail stirs controversy
  A plan to build a new jail for youth in Baltimore has come under criticism from community groups who want criminal justice reform - not a new facility.
• Inglewood, California program receives federal grant A youth advocacy program recently formed a partnership with a group of philanthropic women in an effort to reduce the tens of thousands of teenagers who go through the Los Angeles criminal justice system annually.

On the Radio

• Mental health treatment options for youth
  Listen to a discussion on Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think out Loud about the types of community-based treatment that make the difference.
• Early intervention key to treating mentally ill teens
  Results from the Early Assessment and Support Alliance are cost effective because they keep kids out of more costly juvenile jails. It can deliver dramatic results by getting to kids as early as age 12, but the program doesn't reach everyone. 

Web Events

• Linking primary care and systems of care
  Innovation at the state and community levels to support the social and emotional well being of all children. Take a look at pioneering examples of new relationships stimulating innovation and change.
  When: December 15, 2011, 1:00 - 2:30 PM (EST)
  Register online
• Offender reentry in Indian country & native communities
  This webinar reviews the multi-jurisdictional challenges facing tribal law enforcement, courts and corrections, and the important role the partnerships play in offender reentry.
  When: December 6, 2011, 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. (EST)
  Register online
• What is the role of medication-assisted treatment in drug courts?
  Live-streaming web event provides drug court professionals and others interested in the effectiveness of drug courts with essential information about how medication-assisted treatment can improve client outcomes.
  When: December 6, 2011, 2:00 - 3:30 (EST)
  Register online

Lori Howell is a Senior Associate at Prichard Communications. She is a seasoned public affairs practitioner with a background in public policy, fundraising, and education. Lori helps clients with online editorial services, media relations, and publications. Before joining Prichard Communications, she served as chief of staff for Greg Macpherson, a former Oregon state legislator, an account executive for the Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit educational testing consortium, and once taught English in Choshi, Japan.